The Grandfather Paradox
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: An enthusiastic young man who has invented the time machine jumps back into the past...only to discover he no longer exists! My take on the grandfather paradox.


I wrote this a long time ago, and I eventually decided that it would be a great The Time Machine story since it goes into that category. I am hoping to have my first Time Machine stories up at some point, and I hope you enjoy them.

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

The Grandfather Paradox.

Alex grinned as he finished the work on the circuit board. At last, after four years of long hard work, developing his theories in college with the help of some of the physics professors, so many experiments and so many failures, but he'd done it.

He had built one of the greatest inventions in history.

He had built a time machine.

Alex's grin faded as he realised something, he had a time machine, the whole of history and the future was open to him, he could travel anywhere and anywhen he liked, and yet he didn't have a clue where he wanted to go first. Feeling slightly disheartened, something he'd managed to keep under control despite the numerous failures he had; he remembered the failure when he'd tried to dematerialise a cup and flip it into the future by four seconds, only for it to appear as a pile of clay that hadn't even been moulded.

Failures like that had only helped him move on, but now he didn't know where to go from here. Alex put down the screwdriver he had in his left hand and the still-hot soldering iron in his other after switching off the power, and he sat down to think about where he wanted to travel to. Ever since he'd started the project to build a time machine, Alex hadn't been able to stop himself from acting out little fantasies, pretending he was Doc Brown travelling in his Delorean, or Doctor Who fighting Daleks in the 22nd century.

He'd dreamt, too, of travelling back to witness the building of Stonehenge, meeting Shakespeare, partying with Elvis Presley. But those were fantasies, this was real life. He had a time machine, but where should he travel to first?

Full of boundless energy despite his apparent depression, Alex got up from the stool he'd been sitting on...and leapt onto the old leather armchair, lost in thought.

Then he saw a picture of his mother. Alex's eyes were drawn to the photo, it had been taken on his 9th birthday party, and whilst he was happy in the photo it hadn't been until he was a little older than he'd started to notice how depressed his mother truly was. His grandmother had been forced to raise his mother alone because her father, Alex's grandfather, had died when his mum had been a baby.

Alex didn't really know what his mother and grandmother had endured, they never really spoke about it, but he could imagine that it had been incredibly hard for his grandma to raise her daughter without support from her husband, but what about his mother?

How many things had she missed out because of her dad's death? What kind of things could she have learnt from him? Alex wondered what kind of life would he have led if his grandfather had survived his accident. His mother had always taken on a confused expression whenever she spoke about it, his grandfather's death had been mysterious since he'd dropped dead in the middle of a busy street. It had been assumed he'd died of a heart attack, but he hadn't a history of heart problems, so how had he died?

Alex shrugged to himself, maybe it wasn't important, and he tried to think of other places he would find more interesting, the Great Pyramids perhaps? He tried to think about those places, then he shook his head. No, it was hopeless. Now he'd thought about it Alex couldn't get it out of his head. He wanted, no needed to travel back in time before his grandfather died, meet him for himself. An idea came into his head; what if he could take his mother and grandmother back in time to meet the man? Alex grinned as he pictured the touching reunion, but then he decided to take it slowly. He would have to meet the man first, show him the future or something.

Grin now firmly fixed onto his face, Alex walked up to the time machine and started programming the controls.

The bright light blinded Alex, but he could see clearly something that terrified him. The time machine had taken him back into the past, he could see it; there was the old school on the other side of the river that had been demolished to make way for a newer, more modern school, but that wasn't what terrified him so.

The time machine had opened a hole into the past...and as he leapt through the hole at speed, and a man was in the way!

"Get out of the way-" Alex shouted, but it was too late, the man was so taken aback by the vortex and the kid leaping through it, he couldn't move. What happened next was inevitable, Alex couldn't stop himself in time to slow down, and the poor idiot in the way broke his fall, taking the brunt of the impact that sent him tumbling down over the waist-high fence, down the rocky ravine...only for his broken body to come to rest in the river! Only a protruding tree root stopped him from being carried away.

Alex looked down at the dead body with horror, clapping his hands to his face, unable to take his eyes away from the dead body. He feared if he did he'd still see the accusing eyes from the dead man he was sure were glaring back at him. But he didn't turn away for another reason, there was something familiar about the man who'd just died, something in Alex's memory...

What had he done?

Finally, after a few minutes, Alex managed to pull himself away, and he hurried towards the other side of the town. He had to get a policeman, report this, though he had no intention to telling them what really happened. He turned left and right, almost expecting to see a whole crowd of people, glaring accusing at him, making threats, accusations.

But no one was about. The street was empty, but just because no one was visible didn't mean there wasn't someone watching from a window, but Alex couldn't see anybody, part of him wanted to run to the police station, tell the story he'd just invented in his head, a car had come swerving out of nowhere, and he'd accidentally bumped into the man and sent him tumbling down to his death in the ravine. But the school was just opposite, and when he'd been a kid he'd sometimes been bored to death by the never-ending lectures from the teachers, so he'd found solace looking out of the window, watching the world outside. It was very likely a number of kids in this time were doing the same, told their friends he'd knocked a man over the fence, and informed the teachers there was a body below, the teachers wouldn't believe the kids at first, threaten punishments until they looked down into the ravine, since the bottom of the ravine was visible, so was the body. That would prove their story right, and Alex knew it.

XXX

Travelling through the time portal was like going down a waterfall at an amusement park, spun round and round so fast that the time traveller felt as though his brains had been turned to mush. It made Alex feel ill, and when he arrived back into his own time, the spinning motion that had been spinning and twisting him round and round so fast that it made him dizzy, and when the time hole opened up in his lab, he tumbled so far from the hole he slammed into the far wall.

"Ouch!" Alex winced as his chest impacted on the hard plaster, knocking out the breath in his lungs. "I've got to do some work on the time machine, first I knock someone down a ravine to their death, then I hit the wall so fast I barely see. I should've done some thought into how the time machine worked."

Alex took a slow and deep breath into his lungs, then he exhaled through the mouth, looking around the room. Then he stopped. This room...this was his laboratory, he'd programmed the machine to bring him back to the starting point of his journey. This lab should be full of spare parts boxes, a table covered in tools, welding torches, wires, cables, and circuit boards.

The lab was completely empty, it was as though Alex had never lived here...

For a moment Alex thought that maybe the time machine had developed a fault, landed him in a point of time where he hadn't been born, that this flat had never been occupied 'cause it was new, but when he looked out of the window he saw a group of teenagers, some of them had mobile phones clamped to their ears. Yeah, it was his time okay, but why was the flat empty?

Knowing he wouldn't get any answers in an empty flat, Alex decided to take the chance and leave the flat to find his answers. Absently he put his hands in his pockets...and his fingers brushed against the photograph, one of the few his mother had had of herself with her father, and he took it out of his pocket and peered down at it. What he saw made his eyes widen with horror. His mother had been a baby in the picture, she should've been grinning in her father's arms.

But she'd disappeared, like in Back to the Future when that idiot Marty McFly's mother had started fancying him rather than his dad, making it as though he and his siblings had never existed.

"Oh my god," Alex gasped as the horrifying realisation of what he'd done, his eyes finally leaving the empty space once occupied by his mother, moving his gaze upwards...focusing on his grandfather. He'd thought that man he'd knocked down over the fence, into the ravine where his broken body was stopped from being carried down the river by a massive tree root had looked familiar.

That man...he was Alex's grandfather, and he'd obviously died before he and his grandmother had had a daughter, Alex's mother, which would mean she would never have had him and he would never have built a time machine to travel back in time to kill him.

The grandfather paradox, but Alex wouldn't accept it.

He ran to the door, threw it open, and dashed to the stairs and ran all the way down. He couldn't - no - would not accept what he'd done. He had to find out for himself.

As he ran down the stairs only one thought was in his mind, the grandfather paradox. The problem with paradoxes had been one of the many reasons time travel was considered impossible, but none were as classic as the grandfather paradox. The premise was simple enough; If you built a time machine, went back into the past and killed your grandfather by accident or by design - say your grandfather had been an abusive bastard, and you wanted him to pay - only you killed him at a point before he conceived the child who'd grow up to be the parent of the time traveller, so the traveller would not have built the time machine to go back into the past to kill the grandparent in the first place.

The grandfather paradox, but what Alex couldn't grasp was why he hadn't faded away as his mother had in the photograph, and he had some ideas - maybe the time machine had protected him somehow, waiting for him to go back in time, clean up his mess.

So why was he rushing out of the flat? Alex wanted to visit his mother, he hoped and prayed that his grandfather had died after he and his grandmother had had a kid despite the evidence he had already - the lack of possessions in his flat was a major giveaway - but he just couldn't accept it. The horror of what he'd done and what it could mean was what gave Alex the strength to run despite his lungs feeling like a blacksmith's bellows or a hot air balloon, and his leg muscles feeling like they were being transmuted into lead weights, he had to keep moving.

Fictional and scientific theories flowed through his head like an acidic river, burning themselves into his mind's eye. What if he did exist as someone else? Was he in an alternative world? Would he fade away because he didn't exist or something? Alex didn't know, and though some of the theories rushing through his head might've seemed stupid he knew he couldn't discount them. How did he know what happened when someone messed up with time travel? Alex had no idea how he managed to arrive at the court where his mother's flat was so quickly, but he couldn't go any further. He doubled up at the waist, panting and taking in deep breaths to give his lungs time to work. Usually, Alex kept fit by swimming lengths, jogging and visiting the gym, but recently he'd been so determined to finish the time machine his fitness had waned over the last few months, plus he was weighed down by his jeans, his heavier trainers and his mobile and keys. Alex blew out a breath and walked unsteadily towards the door, and he hesitated. Maybe it would be better if he called up rather than just walk in.

"Hello?" An unfamiliar voice answered when Alex had just pressed the keypad. He stared at the grille in surprise. The voice was younger than his mother's, with a hint of a Chinese accent. Had he typed in the wrong flat number?

"Hello?" This time the voice on the other end had a hint of impatience, and a bit of worry. Alex couldn't say he blamed her with how many psychos there were out there. "Yes, sorry, I'm looking for my mother." He gave the flat number.

"I'm afraid you've made a mistake," the woman replied, "I live in the flat number you've just given. Perhaps its a case of mistaken identity?"

Alex did his best to keep his fear under control, but it was hard. "Yeah, perhaps," he replied before deciding to make up a lie. "Yeah, sorry. Er, my mum has just moved here, and I came from the city to visit. Either I misheard the name of the court she lives in, or she didn't give me the right number. Sorry for the mistake."

"That's okay."

"Goodbye."

Alex walked slowly back to his flat, numb with pain. His mother didn't exist, he thought. I've killed my own mother, she doesn't exist. Oh god. But the almighty wasn't listening to him, as Alex soon realised when he felt a pain in his stomach that made him cry out in pain, and he felt a similar pain in his hands. What he saw nearly stopped his heart.

His hands were becoming translucent, no transparent. He could literally see through the palm of his right hand, right through to the floor. Alex supposed he shouldn't have been surprised the time machine couldn't protect him forever. A thought made him curse his own stupidity, he should never have left his flat, it would've been better and quicker if he'd used his phone to call his mother from his own flat to see if she was there rather than waste all the time running to it. He could've checked it much faster, and he could've jumped back through time in a second, but no, he'd let his own stupidity get in the way, and he was now going to fade away before he could stop it.

Alex tried to run back to the flat, and he managed to get quite a distance, but the feeling spread like a disease through his legs, making it harder for him to jog back. What surprised him the most was that even though he was in plain sight, no one on the streets seemed to notice when he was almost lying face down on the pavement. Had he already ceased to exist? Standing up became an increasing chore for Alex, and after the third fall, he almost couldn't manage it. Somehow he managed to pick himself back up...and whatever was left of his knees almost made him collapse again, and this time he couldn't do anything to stop it. He couldn't get up.

Alex looked down at his hands and legs again, and the pain in his eyes made it difficult to focus, but he managed to focus a little bit to see his hands. Had they faded completely?

With that thought, Alex disappeared forever. He would never show the world the time machine, never prove to people the grandfather paradox existed, never prevent the paradox from happening to him.

XXX

At the moment, a woman who had no idea about the time machine or Alex was just finishing giving birth. The woman, a blond 23-year-old, cried and hugged her husband, crying tears of joy as she heard her new child. It had been a difficult birth, full of complications, but they'd done it. They had a baby.

The nurse smiled as she gently slid the baby into the woman's arms, and the new mother gasped with awe, the baby was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life. She knew she was biased.

"Congratulations," the doctor said to the starstruck parents. "It's a girl."

The mother ran a gentle hand over the baby's blond hair. (The paradox faded Alex had brown hair.)

"What're we going to call her?" The girl's father asked, gazing at his daughter. He could tell she'd be a heartbreaker when she was older.

The mother's smile faded, and then a name that seemed to pop out of nowhere came out of her mouth. "Alexis."

Time always mended itself.


End file.
